I am honored to have known Estley Schick. I also know the author of the article

That's a nice gift, but I'm going to talk about that site you linked. Those are very expensive for what they are, and what they are is another Longquan forge modern repro. Now, that's fine in and of itself, there's actually some pretty nice swords coming out of China, but they're asking two times the going rate on the low end and a hell of a lot more than than that on the high end.

Because I want to dink around with some back yard cutting without spending stupid money on it, I've been looking into the budget Longquan cutter thing. All of these guys make fancy display swords as well, but bang-for-the-buck, I've narrowed it down to the following two (out of many) and intend to order a basic through-hardened (no hamon) 9260 beater soon.

https://www.hanbonforge.com/

https://www.dremsword.com/

You can "custom your sword" with most all of the Longquan builders, they tend to offer a lot of the same fittings because they come from the same sources. If you stick to the iron or brass fittings, they tend to look less cheap compared to the alloy. These two makers in particular don't tend to do great Ito, but all the reviews I'm seeing say the fittings are very tight, which is nice. If you wanted a real sword with high carbon steel, full tang, and a nice hamon (actually clay tempered, not wire-wheel brushed), they start around $200. Dremsword offers a Honsanmai that starts at $415 before you start picking your fittings and other options. I threw together some random add-on charge specs and came out at $608 for a wakizashi, and that's probably more appropriate than $2,400 for a Chinese production sword.